The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

by Frank Dikötter

Another form of impoverishment appeared. Many of the people targeted during the campaign were hardly better off than their neighbours, but across the country there were also families who had accumulated considerable material wealth. Whether scholars, merchants or politicians, many were committed collectors of art objects, sometimes just a few small curios, inkstones, water droppers or figurines to decorate a desk or complement a study, sometimes more extensive collections of rare manuscripts, bronze coins, wooden furniture or ink paintings. In fact, such was the respect for high culture in a country governed for centuries by scholar officials that few households that could afford it lived without some token of the past. Some of this was distributed during land reform, but much was destroyed, to the point where in June 1951 the Ministry of Culture ordered all antiques and rare books confiscated during land reform to be collected and inventoried. In many cases it was too late. In Shandong, for instance, most of the antiques had already been burned or consigned to the scrap heap, recycled as so many relics of an exploitative past.